Aftershock
by nebroadwe
Summary: Unsettled and sleepless after a dangerous adventure, Raf turns to Bumblebee for comfort. (TW: depiction of acute stress reaction.)


**Author's Note:** _This story is set in the aftermath of Foxbear's _Deja Vu_ (itself set early in season 2 of TF:P), but no particular knowledge of the events of that work is required to enjoy this one. To sum up the backstory : Raf, having played sidekick, translator and hostage in an off-world adventure, must deal with the fallout after returning home. Many thanks to Foxbear and Amber_Dawn for their beta reads; any infelicities which remain are solely my responsibility._

* * *

The oil-starved squeak of a door hinge yanked Raf back from the edge of sleep as effectively as a proximity alert. His eyes snapped open, taking in the blurred outlines of his dresser and laundry hamper in the narrow parallelogram of light cast by the hall fixture, but little else. _"¿Quién — ?"_ he mumbled, groping for his glasses on the nightstand.

_"Shh,"_ replied his _mamá_'s voice soothingly. _"Dulces sueños, Rafael."_

He turned his head to check the time on his bedside charging dock: 22:45. _Oh._ Just his parents' usual check to make sure he wasn't coding under the blankets instead of sleeping, then. "'Night, _Mamá, Papá,"_ he said, rolling onto his back to squint at the double silhouette in the doorway.

_"Que sueñes con los angelitos, mijo,"_ his _papá_ replied, and softly closed the door.

Raf tracked his parents' footsteps down the hall first to his sisters', then to his brothers' bedroom, grinning at his siblings' protests as cell phones and comic books were confiscated and gaming sessions shut down. _"Just ten more minutes!"_ cut no more ice with _Mamá_ and _Papá_ than a B-minus. Bedtime, like school, was serious business at _Casa Esquivel_. With a click from the wall switch the hall went dark; a few moments later the subdued mutter of some channel's _noticias nocturnas_ sounded from the living room.

Raf burrowed back into his pillows. This was the first night he hadn't slept straight through curfew since returning from Cybertron. The exhaustion of the adventure was fading along with his cuts and bruises, and after a few days of his _mamá_'s cooking he was well on his way to gaining back the weight he'd lost subsisting on nutrient gloop. He wormed his fingers down between mattress and headboard to touch his own cell phone, with its assurance of help on speed dial whenever he might need it. Not that he wanted to talk to anyone right now, though — just find his way into those _dulces sueños_. Raf groaned as the news gave way to a raucous commercial, his ears straining in spite of his drowsiness to extract meaning from the half-heard voice of the pitchman, and pulled his blankets over his head.

But even in that warm, Suavitel-scented cocoon, sleep eluded him. He shifted from side to side, tangling his legs in the top sheet and kicking them free until it slithered away down the side of the bed. Annoyed, he threw all his covers back and straightened them, then plumped his pillows and settled down again, breathing in deliberate rhythm and forcing his legs to lie slack. The television fell silent, and once more his _papá_'s footsteps paced the length of the house, checking front door and back door and garage before retreating to the master bedroom. Water gurgled briefly in the plumbing, after which all the house was quiet at last.

Or not.

The whir of Raf's laptop, crunching data from the Autobots' mainframe through a hopefully improved version of an energon-locating algorithm; the drone of the central air conditioner and the whisper of a cool breeze through the vents; the occasional creaks as the house shifted as if it, too, were capable of transformation: every single night noise seemed somehow magnified and significant, drawing his notice. His body refused to relax, muscles tensed just shy of cramping as he tossed and turned. Raf peered blearily at the dock's digital readout again: 23:57. _C'mon,_ he thought, firmly shutting his eyes and resisting the temptation to tweak the algorithm's code. There was a reason he'd set it to run this test overnight: _It needs to execute, and I need to sleep. Sleep. Sack out. Hit the hay. Recharge. Power down ..._

The muted rumble of a diesel engine turning onto the street startled Raf once more into wakefulness. He grabbed his glasses (still miraculously intact despite malfunctioning groundbridges and acid rain and callous handling) and fumbled them on as the passing headlights zebra-striped his window blinds. Sitting up, he glanced at the laptop blinking away on his desk, then at the time. _00:13? This isn't working._

Raf swung his legs off the bed and pushed his feet into his sneakers, then grabbed a pillow and tiptoed over to the window. The well-greased sash opened soundlessly and closed behind him easily once he'd scrambled over the sill. Crouching beside the juniper bush at the corner of the house, he let his eyes adjust to the glare of the sodium-vapor lamps dotting the sidewalk before sweeping his gaze up and down the street in search of his guardian. Despite his bright paint, Bumblebee was very, very good at blending in with his surroundings, and it took a few moments for Raf to identify his spoiler parked in the shade of the acacia that dominated the Herreras' front yard.

After a quick check for approaching cars and lighted windows, Raf clutched his pillow to his chest and darted across the street. Bumblebee's door opened to receive him and he climbed quickly into the back seat. "Hey, 'Bee," he said.

_:Hello, Raf,:_ came the response from the dashboard speakers, the Autobot faction badge on the steering wheel blinking in time with the words. _:What's up? Shouldn't you be in bed?:_

Raf smiled briefly: grownups of all species were serious about bedtime, it seemed. "Couldn't sleep," he answered, setting his pillow down beside him. "Do you mind if I — ?"

For answer, the windows opaqued and the console lights dimmed, while the cushion beneath him began radiating a pleasant warmth. "Thanks," Raf said gratefully, and stretched out along the seat.

But it was not truly quiet here, either. The low hum of Bumblebee's idling systems, normally soothing, now served only to remind Raf that he was outside breaking curfew and in for a world of trouble if anyone noticed he was gone. The dim glow from the dashboard kept seeping through his closed eyelids, painting neon starbursts on his field of vision. He squinched his eyes shut and tried not to fidget, aware that 'Bee was observing him. Ever since he'd been infected with dark energon, his guardian had been quick to worry about him, and Raf didn't want any fuss over a little bout of insomnia. _All I _want_ to do is sleep,_ he thought, grimacing as he turned over onto a bruised hip. _Why is that so hard?_

But his surroundings demanded more and more of his attention: the half-heard vibrations and the flickering lights and the smell, not of leather and gasoline, but of energon, a faint, metallic tang in his nostrils, easier to recognize since Megatron's shot had grazed him, since he'd run through the crowded, cacophonous streets of Golden Age Iacon, every sense attuned to its dangers ... Raf sat up abruptly, unable to lie still any longer, so alert he felt lightheaded. He clutched the driver's side headrest to steady himself, listening, listening with all his might for the sound of engines, for the words only he could understand, for the tramp of the guards bringing Jack back from the pits ... _Please, let him be alive ... O Dios, por favor ..._

_:Raf! Raf, what's wrong?:_

Bumblebee's voice cut through the waking nightmare, and Raf gasped and wobbled on the edge of his seat. Leaning forward, he pressed his forehead against the headrest. "I — I don't know," he said. His heart was knocking against his ribs and a cold sweat dampened his pajama top. "I don't know!"

The dome light clicked on and Raf flinched, raising a hand to shield his eyes. Bumblebee immediately dimmed the bulb; after a moment, he reclined the front passenger seat. _:Come up here.:_

Raf hesitated, then crawled gingerly into the offered place. The seat back rose as he settled in, stopping just short of vertical; a warm draught from the heater swirled around his calves and the windshield cleared to one-way glass, revealing a waning moon playing hide-and-seek in the acacia's branches. Bumblebee said nothing, but his systems, cycling up, emitted an almost organic thrum, like the purr of a contented cat. Raf fixed his eyes on the play of leaves stirring overhead and tried to calm himself. _I'm safe. I'm safe. 'Bee's right here, so I'm safe. Nothing's happening. I'm home; I'm on Earth. I'm safe ..._

The console's viewscreen activated and Raf started, his lingering fear fighting with dismay that Bumblebee might have commed Ratchet — or, worse, Mrs. Darby. But the screen merely displayed a multi-colored latticework of figures and glyphs that Raf recognized as a graphic representation of a tactical problem — one of the middling to insanely difficult ones, judging by the number of variables. _:You think that's bad?:_ Bumblebee had asked when Raf had exclaimed over the complexity of one such exercise. _:You should see how much data they expect you to handle in the strategic sets. I_ hate _logistics.:_ Raf had been surprised to discover that his friend had homework, too, until Bumblebee had shown him the long list of material he needed to master before he could be promoted from scout to warrior. Raf had tried to help him with his assignments now and then, but except for calculating probabilities it was all beyond him. Tactics were more Jack's sort of thing, anyway — he was the best of them at keeping his head in a crisis and figuring out what everyone else should do.

_("I'm going to need you functioning at your peak ... I can't read this archaic Cybertronian ...")_

_:You know,:_ Bumblebee said quietly as he highlighted a portion of the diagram and manipulated its contents, _:the first time I got captured, the worst thing about it was how helpless I felt — helpless and stupid.:_ The console chimed approval of a correct solution, and Bumblebee scrolled down the sidebar to select a new problem. :_I'd walked right into a trap, you see, and even after Cliffjumper got me out — we were in the same unit back then, too — those feelings stuck with me for a while.:_

Raf's gaze shifted from the mesmerizing dance of pixels on the screen to Bumblebee's faction badge. 'Bee almost never told him war stories, and the ones he did tell were usually about the daring adventures of the bots he admired, not about himself. "Was that when — when you lost your — ?"

_:No!:_ Bumblebee replied through a hiss of static, then continued more clearly, _:That was — that happened later.:_

Raf's hands clenched on the edges of the seat cushion. "I'm — I'm sorry," he stammered.

_:It's okay, Raf,:_ Bumblebee said quickly — _it (~past condition continuing into the present~),_ Raf noted automatically, fingers twitching as if to type the required keystrokes. _:It(~present condition~)'s all right.:_

"No," Raf said, and this time it was his voice that cracked. "No, that was stupid. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry — " The words came tumbling out of him like a rattle of scree down a collapsing slope, faster and faster, louder and louder. "You're right, I was stupid — I told Jack not to wander off and then I went and did it myself. They wouldn't have caught us if I'd just stayed close to Hunter — to Optimus — and they couldn't have forced Jack to fight without me and he wouldn't have gotten hurt — it was all my fault, 'Bee, and I couldn't do anything to fix it, and I was so, so scared — " His throat seized up, choking off his voice like a jolt from his shock collar, and the stink of energon was so strong he could taste it, and his stomach twisted but he had to keep what he'd eaten down —

The seat's restraints unfurled to either side of him, tongue and clasp pressing down on his shoulders. _:Raf, listen to me,:_ Bumblebee said firmly. :_I know you made mistakes, but you also got yourself and Jack home.:_ Raf shook his head and the clasp pulled forward to touch his cheek, the cool metal soothing against his hot skin. _:And even though you felt helpless and frightened, you didn't let that stop you. You beat that fear once; you can do it again.:_

"But what if I can't?" Raf whispered. He didn't want to feel like this, but the anxiety kept spreading through him like a rash, and nothing seemed to relieve it for long. "What if I just can't?"

The buckle stroked his face. _:You can. And you don't have to do it alone. I promise I will be here for you whenever you need me, for as long as you need me to be.:_

The words reverberated with unspoken context, too much to comprehend. Raf shuddered, closing his eyes, but his hands tugged hesitantly at the seat belts. Bumblebee took the hint and the straps crisscrossed his chest to snug him in, giving when he wriggled against them, comforting without confining. Raf held on to the thick bands tightly, rocking a little in time with his hectic breathing. The air around him was still full of strange, soft sounds, the whirs and clicks and hums of an alien cybernetic system, uncanny and unsettling. But as Bumblebee gently embraced him, Raf began to hear in them something familiar, the sonic equivalent of his friend's life signature, a constant, reassuring pulse: _I'm here. I'm here. I'm here._

At long last the tension in Raf's muscles drained away, leaving behind only vague twinges of discomfort and an overwhelming exhaustion that, if nothing else, finally promised sleep. With a thankful sigh, Raf turned on his left side and snuggled into the seat, which tipped further back to accommodate his new position. _"También te quiero, _'Bee," he murmured, and the seat belts tightened briefly around him in affectionate response.

_:Rest well, Raf,:_ his guardian whispered, shutting off the dome light.

* * *

Bumblebee kept a watchful set of sensors on Raf as the human powered down. His biometrics had largely normalized again, pulse and respiration rate steady, temperature no longer fluctuating, though the speed with which he had switched from hyperarousal to recharge was perhaps worrying. _Maybe I should have called Ratchet,_ Bumblebee thought uncertainly. Raf had begun to chafe at the constant scrutiny of his frame, and even Nurse Darby had asked them to back off and let him rediscover his own strength. _But this was his processor glitching_. Still, it was a glitch Bumblebee thought he understood, having experienced something like it himself, and what had helped him hadn't been a medical intervention, but the support of his unit and the continued exercise of his function.

Behind their fragile shutters Raf's optics twitched as he dreamed — a peculiarly Terran aspect of recharge, and a bizarrely inefficient form of memory defragmentation. Bumblebee hoped his friend wasn't going to suffer any "nightmares" as part of the process. Instinctively he began broadcasting reassuring glyphs — _~courage~, ~fellowship~, ~safety~, ~love~_ — though he wasn't sure whether Raf could perceive them. Human electromagnetic fields weren't integrated into their comms and the wavelengths their sensors could detect and interpret without mechanical aid were severely limited. Still, it couldn't hurt.

As if in response, Raf muttered incoherently and squirmed, and Bumblebee slowly reclined the seat as far as it would go. Humans could recharge in almost any position, as Miko and Agent Fowler occasionally demonstrated, but Raf preferred to do so prone. His optics stilled as he passed from dreaming to a more restful state, and Bumblebee covertly vented a cooling draught through his own stressed systems. If his charge had suffered another glitch, he would have been hard-pressed to justify not calling Ratchet in the first place —

_"Base to Bumblebee. Comms check."_

_Scrap._ Of course Ratchet would be manning the board when Bumblebee missed his mid-shift check-in while he was helping a possibly processor-damaged human elude his parents' surveillance. _:Bumblebee here,:_ he replied quickly. _:All quiet. No hostile activity. Nothing to report.:_

The open channel practically shouted_ Oh, really?_ back at him. _"Is Rafael with you?"_ Ratchet asked after a few disbelieving millicycles.

Sometimes the medic's acuity seemed uncomfortably close to a Sigma Gift. _:Yes,_: Bumblebee admitted, _:but — :_

_"Send him home. Right now."_

_:But Ratchet — :_

_"No 'buts!' Your mission is to guard him, not to abet him in breaking curfew. What if his progenitors decide to check his berth and discover him missing? Not to mention that he is still recovering from not one, but two life-threatening episodes!"_

That, Bumblebee thought, was laying it on more than a little thick, as the humans said. _:Raf's not an invalid!:_ he protested. _:Nurse Darby cleared him for — :_

_"Immature humans require between nine and eleven hours of recharge per cycle, and should enter sleep mode approximately six hours prior to attaining their lowest core temperature of that cycle,"_ Ratchet continued inexorably. Bumblebee stifled a groan. _"In addition, the use of light-emitting electronic devices in the hours before recharge has been shown to negatively affect human circadian rhythms. So turn off the video games right now and tell Rafael to power down!"_

_:But he has,:_ Bumblebee managed to interject. _:He was having trouble recharging, so he came out and we — we talked about it. He powered down a little while ago and I don't want to disturb him.:_

The comm line produced another _Oh, really?_ pause; then Ratchet pinged Bumblebee's processor with a brusque request to piggyback on his sensor suite. Bumblebee granted permission and got out of the way as the medic comprehensively scanned the human's frame and the electrical activity of his cortex. _"Humph,"_ Ratchet muttered. _"Trouble recharging, you said? Did he report any nightmares or other cognitive disturbances?"_

_:No,:_ Bumblebee replied hesitantly.

This time he was pretty sure the medic simply caught the subvocal _~not exactly~_ within his transmission, as Ratchet's next ping demanded his logs of the night's events. Half reluctant, half relieved, Bumblebee packaged the data and dispatched it in a compressed burst. The ensuing silence was at once more thoughtful and more threatening than the ones which had preceded it. Bumblebee reminded himself that he had faced down Megatron without breaking, and kept his comm from broadcasting excuses through sheer force of will. _"Very well,"_ Ratchet said at last. _"If he's sleeping, let him sleep."_

_"Uh, sure,"_ answered Bumblebee, taken rather aback by this reversal.

_"But keep an optic on him. If exhibits any of the physical symptoms Nurse Darby warned us about — "_ a packet streamed across the line, twin to one Bumblebee already possessed, but he accepted the update anyway — _"notify me immediately. If he experiences any further psychological distress ... "_ Ratchet hesitated, then sighed. _"Use your best judgment. And for Primus's sake, make sure he's back in his own berth before his parents online."_

_:Will do, Ratchet!:_ Bumblebee acknowledged. He had plenty of observational data about Raf's family's diurnal habits; it would be trivial to determine the optimal moment for re-entry. _:Leave it to me!:_

Another pause. This was worse than trying to converse with an orbiting ship over a sub-light line, Bumblebee decided. If Ratchet kept him on the comm much longer, he was pretty sure he'd develop his own glitch. _"I will. For now,"_ Ratchet replied, and a low rumble from his engine made that a warning. _"Take good care of him. I shall consult with Nurse Darby in the morning about follow-up. Base out."_

The channel finally closed. Spark lightened, Bumblebee cleared his caches and returned his full attention to Raf. Sometime during the conversation the boy had rolled over onto his back and begun snoring softly, open-mouthed. The plastic frame that held his corrective lenses, having slipped down his face, was pinching his nasal vents shut and impeding his respiration. Bumblebee reached over with one of the driver's side seat belts and removed the lenses to the dash, then somewhat awkwardly brushed the hair back from Raf's forehead, as he had seen Nurse Darby do for Jack while he slept. _:I'm right here, little brother,:_ he murmured. _:I'm not going anywhere.:_

Beneath his touch Raf quieted, lips quirking in a one-sided smile.


End file.
